


Hearing Voices

by Sinope



Category: Glitch (Video Game)
Genre: Women Being Awesome, non-gendered characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinope/pseuds/Sinope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've waited so long to study Piety, and now it's gone all wrong -- but maybe that's all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearing Voices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheDivineGoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDivineGoat/gifts).



"What do you want to learn next?" asks your Familiar.

You don't even need to think about your answer. You've been working at this for so long: spending hours with a Focusing Orb controlling your unruly thoughts, donating at every shrine you passed, even studying learning techniques so you could absorb the beautiful knowledge more quickly. "Piety," you say.

The familiar tickle begins in the back of your head -- a sort of hum, a buzz of facts flowing in.

 _Cosma's emblem is the sun shining from behind clouds, and her herald is a peal of laughter._

 _Lemuel, or Lem to his followers, is known as the Swift-Footed Traveler._

 _The description "pig-headed" owes its origin to Mab, she who has the face of a sow and the diligence of a farmer._

Your heart races with the surges of information. You want to mine the deeps of Ur and place each sparkling rock into a new Giant's shrine. You want to bestow fresh food and the blessings of Pot upon every Glitch you meet. You want to spend a month turning in a circle of divine icons, spending an hour in supplication to each one before you move to the next.

It is evening, and it is morning: the first day of learning.

 

* * *

 

On the second day, the buzz of knowledge is more muted. You flit about your home in Inari, feeding animals and harvesting herbs, until -- halfway through making lunch -- your saucepan breaks. Tinkering with tools was never your forté, so you head to Kymi, where they have a hardware vendor.

As soon as you step onto the new street, you can tell that something's wrong. All the animals are crumpled on the ground, sick and delirious, and the forest is eerily quiet. Then the silence is broken by a high, harsh cry -- the cry of the Rook.

This isn't your first Rook encounter; you know what to do. Yell for help from other Glitchen, tend to sick animals, use your Focusing Orb to stun the Rook, and run like hell. So you cry out "ROOK ATTACK!" at the top of your lungs, then pull out your Orb to start collecting your energies. Another Glitch runs up, a pretty pink-skinned stranger, adding her own energy to the Orb; together, you feel unstoppably strong. But something's pulling you away, twisting things up in your head, contradicting what you _know_ , and there's darkness, dark wings and pinions scraping across your mind --

 

* * *

 

When you wake up, you can hear two things: a cheerful whistling, slightly off-key, and the calm voice of the Familiar in your head. _Humbaba walks on all fours, demonstrating her kinship to the animals who are her domain. . ._ Everything will be all right, you think, and yawn in relieved relaxation.

"Oh, you're awake!" the stranger says, hurrying over to your bedside. You look around, and yes, this is your own home. She seems to notice your confusion. "I hope you don't mind -- I used your key to let us in. I don't actually have a house right now, and yours was so close. How are you feeling?"

"Better, thanks." You swing your legs out of bed and take a better look at [your rescuer](http://www.glitch.com/profiles/PUVL665GGQJ2O4V/). Dark auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, pert nose, wide smile, and a flirty little skirt that ripples as she walks. "So what happened?"

"I'm not sure. I've seen people pass out because the Rook attacked them, but this wasn't that. You kept mumbling something about cawing in your head."

"How very strange." You shake your head, as if to dismiss the thoughts, and stand up, offering a hand of greeting. When she touches your fingers, you feel a pleasant shiver. "I haven't seen you around here before; are you visiting?"

She smiles and holds your hand, a bit longer than necessary. "Not exactly. My name's Beth, and I'm . . . sort of a career traveler right now. After years studying and serving the Giants, and seeing how much the Rook has been devastating everything they build, I decided that there had to be a way to repel it. Now I just need to find it."

"So you're searching for a way to fight the Rook?"

"Sort of. I mean, yes, but in the meantime, I try to stay tuned in to the pattern of Rook attacks. I've studied teleportation, so if I can anticipate the attacks, then I can be in the right place at the right time to help locals like you."

You're aware that your jaw has dropped a bit. She seems surreal, like a hero from the stories. Searching for words, you seize on the last surprise. "You can teleport? So you can go anywhere at all?"

"More or less. It takes a lot of energy out of me, though, so I can't do it too often. But it's pretty amazing. You've never teleported at all?"

You shake your head ruefully. "Life here is pretty simple, I'm afraid. I've never even left Chakra Phool."

Her eyes widen. "Never? But there's so much to see out there! The cliffs of Salatu, the blue caverns of Ilmenskie, the flower-meadows of Groddle Isle . . . We've _got_ to change this," she says with conviction.

You look into those bright, resolute eyes and think about how intimate it had felt to merge your energies for that first moment, fighting the Rook together.

"Okay," you say. "I'll come."

 

* * *

 

Your first day together passes in a haze of delight. Beth's noticed attacks increasing on Uralia, so she takes you there first, and the two of you wander the island hand-in-hand, jumping over hillocks and resting in the shade of purple palms. She shows you her favorite place on the island, a floating bower with the statues of two tiny owls. Your first kiss with her is there, colored with the scent of the lavender grass.

The two of you sleep under the stars that night in a mossy nook of Oktyabrya, and you've never felt at such peace.

Then you begin to dream.

You're in a quiet, dark place; you know you've been here before, but you can't recall when. As your eyes adjust to the lack of light, you realize that you're in barren woods, a forest after fire has burned everything green into ash. You are alone.

Or. You are alone, but you can still hear the hum of knowledge in the back of your mind.

 _The Rook is Liberator and Destroyer. It tears open the shackles of so-called Imagination, unmasking the Giants' selfish dominion._

Wait, you think. This isn't right.

 _Every day the Giants grow richer, profiting off Glitchen's hard work. What they cannot persuade Glitchen to give them outright, they take through their Street Spirits in usurious exchanges._

That's wrong. You're sure that's wrong. But you can't recall why.

 _The Rook demands no tribute but justice. Through its servants, the Boss and the Rube, the Rook redistributes possessions so that even the lowliest Glitch may know freedom from want._

Your head hurts. You search for the comforting presence of your Familiar, to reassure you that these are baseless lies, and find nothing. Instead, in the shadows of that nook in your mind, you hear the shuffling of dark feathers.

"How did you get in my head?" you ask, cautiously.

A cawing cackle. "You've been learning Piety. Your Familiar tried control what you learned about the Giants, just like it controls everything else you learn. Yesterday, at last, I had the opportunity to intervene."

"But you're teaching me lies!"

"Wrong," the voice says. "The Familiar has been teaching you part-truths, and I have been revealing the fuller truth to you. If the Familiar, pawn of the Giants, had its way, you would keep tossing your possessions into their altars for the rest of your life, never questioning what need the Giants have for meat and gems."

"That's easy. They just. They." You fall silent.

The silence stretches on, and on, until at last you wake up.

 

* * *

 

Beth notices how quiet you are, the next day, but you shrug it off as being overwhelmed by all the new places you're seeing. You don't say that there's a darkness tickling at the back of your mind. You don't say that the darkness comes from a tiny part of you that's free from the cheerful patter of the Familiar, and that the freedom feels like stretching your limbs from a cramp they didn't know they had.

You don't say it, in part, because you're afraid of what your Familiar would say if it caught on.

The two of you help fend off a Rook attack on Cebarkul, long enough to herd out the animals and get everyone to safety. Even as you're focusing your energies on the Orb, though, your mind is working, looking at the creatures flying overhead and the spots they target. They don't have a _goal_ of destruction, you realize. The goal, at least in this attack, is a wave of intimidation, dispersing and demoralizing Glitchen through targeted strikes. It finally clicks to you: the Rook wants this territory for itself.

That evening, Beth shows you [a map she's made of the island](http://www.glitch-strategy.com/w/images/5/5b/Rook_plans.JPG). Her hands and pen flit over the paper, marking lines of attack and defense, and you nod or ask questions as appropriate.

Suddenly, her eyes brighten. "Of course! Look, so. All the Rook attacks so far have come from here, here, and here." She gestures across the top and sides of the map. "But there's nothing from down here, and I'd been wondering why. Well, what else is down here?" She pauses for a response.

You look where she's gesturing. "That big mountain?"

"Exactly! But it can't be the mountain itself that's the problem, because plenty of Rook attacks elsewhere have happened on mountain ranges. It's got to be what's on top of the mountain: a shrine."

"They've attacked plenty of other streets with shrines, though," you say skeptically.

"True," she says, "but that's because most outdoor streets outside Uralia have shrines on them. Whereas that's the only shrine on Uralia -- and the Rook seems to be avoiding it."

"So what can we do about it? Build more shrines?"

"Maybe, but like you said, that's not a perfect defense. I'm wondering if there's something about the shrines, something in them, that we could strengthen to repel the Rook for good."

"Maybe so." You give her a smile, hoping it looks genuine, and take her hand. "Sounds like a project to look at tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, definitely," she smiles back. The map gets put away for the evening, and more important things fill your mind.

 

* * *

 

You wake later from more dreams about the dark forest. It's still night out, but the earliest flickers of dawn give you enough light to roll out of your makeshift bed, dig out the map and a pen, and find a secluded spot nearby. Even as you do these things, you wonder why you're doing them; it feels like you're still in the dream, and your actions aren't your own.

You unroll the paper, and your hand begins to write. You sketch annotations all over the map, writing in a script you've never seen, [all slashing lines and sharp angles](http://striatic.net/misc/glitch/rookscratch.jpg). Even without knowing the letters, though, you know what they say. They're noting weaknesses and angles of attack, strategies to break down defenses. In large print that you yourself cannot read, you write, "OBJECTIVE: A GATEWAY TO ALL UR."

Once the annotations are complete, you fold the paper into itself, fashioning a small bird with crooked wings. When you launch the paper raven into a sudden breeze, you know that the wind will take it where it needs to go.

A gasp from behind breaks your trance. "What are you _doing_?" Beth asks, but it's hard to move your lips, like walking underwater. She repeats, "What. Are. You. Doing?"

"I don't know," you say weakly.

You look up at her. Your hand is cramped, and Beth is waiting for an explanation.

With no excuses left to say, you tell her everything: about the dreams, the doubts, the fluttering of feathers in your head. You tell her what the Rook's taught you about the universe, and how hard it is for you to prove it wrong. "I can't fight it with you," you say, finally. "I just can't. Not when part of me is wondering if it's doing a good thing. We say that the Giants are beings of creativity and imagination, but they've created this world bound by rules that no one but the Rook dares to defy."

"I think I understand," Beth says slowly. You can see her mind working in the way that's become familiar over the past few days, flickering from idea to idea and connecting one insight to another. Suddenly a grin bursts across her face. "No, wait, I actually do _understand_!"

"You do?" You furrow your brow. "So you won't attack the Rook any more?"

"No, not that! See, the Rook was telling you truths -- they were just partial truths. The Rook really is trying to reduce the dominion of the Giants, but it's leaving out the part about our own power."

"But that's my point," you say. "We don't have power outside the Rook. We're limited by the world the Giants created."

Beth grins, and it's a beautiful sight. "No, we're not. Think about the pigs!"

"Pigs?" You raise one eyebrow.

"Yes, pigs! If you give them some grain, they eat it. They don't think about it; they don't decide that they'd rather store it for another day. But if you give a Glitch grain, we can choose. We could eat it now, or make something tastier out of it, or store it for later. We can even choose to do the ultimate act of self-control and give it away altogether. That's why we have shrines. You're right, the Giants don't need our donations -- but every time we make them, we assert our own imagination and power to choose, and that gives us power over our world."

You absorb the information slowly. "Even if you're right, how's that relevant to the Rook?"

"Simple. I'd been trying to attack the Rook, to find something even stronger than the stunning attacks we make with the Focusing Orb. But I was looking in the wrong direction. It's our own power of creativity as Glitchen that can actually fight the Rook's un-creation. If we hone the focus of a shrine, then we can aim the power of our donations directly at the Rook, protecting the stability of our world."

Then Beth stops and looks at you directly, full of sympathy. "And believe me, it is our world. _Ours._ " She waits for you to reply, earnest but patient.

The Familiar in your head is silent. The Rook in your head is silent. All you can hear are your own thoughts.

So you don't rush them. It feels like you'd forgotten the pleasure of thinking, of letting your mind turn over each idea like a crystal in your hand, watching each facet as it caught a different glint of light. For several long moments, you sit, and you think. Silence wraps around you lushly, a luxury you'd gone so long without.

At last you look back up at Beth, and you take her hand. "If you're going to climb up to that mountain shrine, then I want to be walking at your side."

 

 _(the beginning.)_


End file.
